David Huby’s Blog Technical and business stuff

Add Windows Authentication Provider IIS 7 Windows 7

http://weblogs.asp.net/zroiy/archive/2008/08/17/missing-windows-authentication-provider-for-iis-7-on-windows-server-2008.aspx describes how to set up Windows Authentication providers in IIS 7 on Windows 2008; the image below shows how it's done in Windows 7

Parsing and analysing IIS W3C log files

There are three methods I've used to parse and analyse IIS W3C log files in the last couple of weeks. AWStats, Log Parser, and SQL Server.

Option 1: Use AWStats

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

Free real-time logfile analyzer to get advanced statistics (GNU GPL). This can be used on the command line and produces graphs and stats in webpages. To install and get stats from your first log file will probably take 1-2 hours.

Option 2: Use Log Parser 2.2 from Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en

"Most software is designed to accomplish a limited number of specific tasks. Log Parser is different... the number of ways it can be used is limited only by the needs and imagination of the user. The world is your database with Log Parser."

Microsoft, I can't believe you really just said that.

Anyway the Log parser is a handy tool, even more so because you can query log files themselves using SQL like syntax. This one only takes about 10 minutes to download and install, and you can be pulling useful numbers out of it within about 5 minutes.

Option 3: Use SQL Server Management Studio

Create a table similar to the following (depending on the format of your log)

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tablename] (
[date] [datetime] NULL,
[time] [datetime] NULL ,
[c-ip] [varchar] (50) NULL ,
[cs-method] [varchar] (50) NULL ,
[cs-uri-stem] [varchar] (255) NULL ,
[cs-uri-query] [varchar] (2048) NULL ,
[sc-status] [int] NULL ,
[sc-bytes] [int] NULL ,
[time-taken] [int] NULL ,
[cs(User-Agent)] [varchar] (255) NULL ,
[cs(Cookie)] [varchar] (2048) NULL ,
[cs(Referer)] [varchar] (2048) NULL
)

Populate it using this command

BULK INSERT [dbo].[tablename] FROM 'c:\data\my.log'
WITH (
FIELDTERMINATOR = ' ',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)

(code taken from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296085)

If you already have SQL Server Management Studio installed this method is useful, especially due to the familiar syntax (SQL)

Running Powershell scripts on a new PC

When running Powershell scripts for the first time on a developer PC, you will need to change the execution policy for Powershell.

By default the behaviour only allows signed scripts to run.

Executing

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

will allow locally developed scripts to be executed.

More information about Set-ExecutionPolicy can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176961.aspx until Microsoft changes their URLs yet again

archive (tar and gzip) with timestamp in bash

#!/bin/bash
tar zcf "$1-archive-$(date + '%F-%H-%M').tar.gz" "$1"

Apache displaying PHP source – update httpd.conf

If Apache is displaying the source of your PHP files, try adding something similar to your MIME module in httpd.conf:

Note - this refers to PHP5 & Apache 2.2. Ensure you are using the correct binary (php5apache2_2.dll) for your php / apache combination.

LoadModule php5_module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\bin\php5apache2_2.dll"

AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5 .php4 .php3 .phtml .phpt